United States v. Kelly
United States v. Kelly
Opinion of the Court
On February 19, 2019, Magistrate Judge David E. Jones issued a report recommending that this court deny defendant Fontae Kelly's motion to suppress the fruits of a video surveillance search. Dkt. No. 219. The defendant filed a timely objection to the recommendation, dkt. no. 223, and the government responded, dkt. no. 225. Because the court finds that the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the apartment's hallway or the exterior of the apartment building's entrance, the court adopts Judge Jones's recommendation and denies the defendant's motion to suppress.
I. BACKGROUND
A. Facts
Jones Jones drew the "facts" section of his report and recommendation from the parties' briefs. Dkt. No. 219 at 1-2.
[b]ased on an investigation into drug distribution activities involving defendant and others, law enforcement installed a video surveillance camera in the hallway on floor level B of 2220 N. Martin Luther King Drive, Milwaukee, in September 2017. Motion to Suppress Fruits of Apartment Video Surveillance Searches 1. The video camera pointed at the exterior door to apartment unit B41 ("the apartment"). Id. at 2. Law enforcement also installed a "pole camera" on a utility pole in proximity to that same apartment complex. Response To Motion To Suppress Fruits of Apartment Video Surveillance Searches 1. On September 27, 2017, law enforcement executed a search warrant for unit B41 and found approximately 10 ounces of heroin, 33 grams of Fentanyl, a kilo press, a grinder, and a firearm. Id. at 2.
Dkt. No. 219 at 1-2. The apartment on Martin Luther King Blvd. was not the *723defendant's residence; he lived at 1810 N. 55th Street in Milwaukee. Dkt. No. 202 at 2.
B. The Parties' Arguments
In asking the court to suppress the evidence, the defendant argued that the government's two video surveillances of the apartment building on Martin Luther King Blvd. constituted unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment. Dkt. No. 195 at 2. Citing the Supreme Court's decision in Carpenter v. United States, --- U.S. ----,
The government responded that the court should deny the motion because the defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in either the apartment's hallway or the outer perimeter of the apartment complex. Dkt. No. 202 at 3. It noted that other courts in this district had held that pole camera surveillance did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
C. Judge Jones' Report and Recommendation
Judge Jones recommended that this court deny the motion to suppress. Dkt. No. 219 at 1. He noted that in determining whether a particular search was unreasonable, he had to consider "whether a trespass by law enforcement occurred, or whether an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy was violated by law enforcement."
Judge Jones observed that the two surveillance cameras monitored the exterior entrance of apartment Unit B41 and the exterior entrance to the apartment building. Id. at 4. He likened these areas to the common areas of an apartment building and found that "the 'area outside one's door lacks anything like the privacy of the area inside.' " Id. (quoting Concepcion,
D. The Defendant's Objection
The defendant alleges that Judge Jones made three errors: (1) he did not accurately apply Jones and Carpenter; (2) he improperly relied on Ciraolo, Knotts and Concepcion; and (3) he failed to consider cases from other courts holding that pole camera surveillance constitutes a search. Dkt. No. 223 at 1-2.
The defendant argues that he seeks to preserve as private "the sum of his movements while entering and leaving the 2200 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. apartment, including unit B41." Id. at 3. He argues that in Jones and Carpenter, the Supreme Court extended the "reasonable expectation of privacy" analysis from Katz v. United States,
The defendant acknowledges that when the Fourth Amendment was drafted, the government could have assigned law enforcement to sit on top of a pole and watch the apartment, or to move into the apartment across the hall and watch through the peephole; this, he agrees, would have not have constituted a search. Id. at 7. He asserts, however, that it is unlikely law enforcement would have done this-it would have been "highly impractical, as long-term physical surveillance was rarely used during the pre-computer age because it was difficult and costly." Id. at 7 (citing Jones,
Asserting that Judge Jones incorrectly relied on Ciraolo, Knotts, and Concepcion, the defendant contends that Carpenter undermined the rationales grounding Ciraolo and Knotts because " Carpenter holds that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the sum of his or her physical movements, even when exposed to the public."
E. Government's Response
The government responds that the defendant asks the court to expand Supreme Court precedent and to "disregard well-established and well-accepted legal authority regarding reasonable expectation of privacy[.]" Dkt. No. 225 at 2. The government contends that the defendant's expectation of privacy is not "reasonable." Id. at 2-3. It observes that the pole camera surveillance law enforcement used is a "conventional surveillance technique" that revealed nothing about the defendant's personal life or his activities inside of, or away from, the two fixed locations of the hallway and the outer perimeter of the apartment complex. Id. at 3. The government claims that the aggregate of information collected from the video surveillance contained "far less detail" then the CSLI collected in Carpenter. Id. at 3-4. The government argues that the defendant would have the court "brush aside well-established law regarding reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of a multi-unit apartment building." Id. at 3 (citing Ciraolo,
II. Analysis
A. Standard of Review
Rule 59(b) governs dispositive motion practice initiated before magistrate judges. Fed. R. Crim. P. 59(b). Parties have fourteen days to file "specific written objections" to a magistrate judge's report and recommendation on a dispositive motion. Fed. R. Crim. P. 59(b)(2). If a party objects, the district judge must review de novo the recommendations of the magistrate judge to which a party timely objects. 28 U.S.C. Section 636(b)(1) ; Fed. R. Crim. P. 59(b)(2), (3). The court can "accept, reject, or modify in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate."
*726B. Analysis
"The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Carpenter,
The motion to suppress argued that the defendant had a "reasonable expectation of privacy ... [in] the aggregate of his movements while inside and outside of the 2200 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. complex." Dkt. No. 195 at 1. He argued that Carpenter demonstrated that "the Supreme Court is ready to hold that long-term surveillance of an individual's home constitutes a search" because that decision found that " '[a] person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.' " Id. at 3 (quoting Carpenter,
The Carpenter Court held that the government's acquisition of CSLI violated the Fourth Amendment. Carpenter,
The defendant reads Carpenter too broadly. Not only did not the text of the decision explicitly limit itself to CSLI, but its rationale relied on the fact that by its nature, a cell phone
tracks nearly exactly the movements of its owner. While individuals regularly leave their vehicles, they compulsively carry cell phones with them all the time. A cell phone faithfully follows its owner beyond public thoroughfares and into private residences, doctor's offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.
Carpenter,
In contrast, stationary video surveillance of the exterior of the apartment building on Martin Luther King Blvd., and the hallway outside of the apartment, could *727capture only limited information: how many people came to the apartment complex and when; how many left, and when; how many people entered the apartment and when; how many left it and when. In some instances, it captured the identities of the people who entered and left the apartment. Unlike a cell phone, the video surveillance did not track the totality of the defendant's movements. It tracked only his arrival to and departure from a residence that wasn't his. The defendant's attempt to equate a process that records only what someone standing in the apartment hallway, or outside the apartment complex, could have seen with a process follows a person into homes, places of worship, hotels, bedrooms, restaurants and meetings, takes Carpenter's reasoning too far.
The Supreme Court has explained that "[t]he Fourth Amendment protection of the home has never been extended to require law enforcement officers to shield their eyes when passing by a home on public thoroughfares." Ciraolo,
Since the Seventh Circuit decided Concepcion in 1991, the governing precedent in this circuit has held that "a tenant has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of an apartment building." Concepcion,
The defendant objects that his situation is "at odds" with Concepcion. He doesn't explain why he feels this is so, and it is difficult for this court to imagine why. Both cases involve surveillance of the common areas of an apartment building. It is true that one involved traditional surveillance with law enforcement eyes, unaided by technology ( Concepcion ); the other involved surveillance with a camera (this case). But the defendant does not explain why that fact makes a difference. It is also true that the defendant in Concepcion lived in the apartment building where the officers searched the common areas and the defendant in this case did not, but that fact cuts against the defendant's argument that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The defendant urges the court to compare his facts to those in Whitaker. Dkt. No. 223 at 9. The defendant argues that a video surveillance camera is analogous to a drug-sniffing dog-a " 'sophisticated sensing device not available to the general public.' "
The comparison is not convincing. The defendant admits that "[a]t the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted, the government could have assembled a team of agents to take turns sitting on top of a *728pole or to live in the apartment hallway to conduct physical surveillance without conducting a search." Dkt. No. 195 at 7. The video camera does the same thing-it sits on top of the pole, or resides across the hallway, and conducts surveillance. It does exactly what a human law enforcement agent could do. That distinguishes the video camera from the narcotics dog, because "a trained drug-sniffing dog is a sophisticated sensing device not available to the general public." Whitaker,
The defendant argues that a pole camera can do something that human law enforcement agents can't do-it can conduct surveillance continuously for a longer period at lower cost and with less likelihood of detection. This is true. And there are courts who have expressed concern that 24/7 surveillance of the outside of a person's house for an extended period raises questions about privacy, because it gives law enforcement a view of many aspects of the resident's life that traditional, human-eye surveillance could not obtain. But the duration of the surveillance is relevant only if the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of the Martin Luther King Blvd. apartment complex-and he didn't.
The defendant asserts that, despite binding Seventh Circuit precedent holding that a tenant (and certainly a non-tenant visitor) does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of an apartment complex, Judge Jones should have considered decisions from other courts. He cites United States v. Cuevas-Sanchez,
Even if Judge Jones didn't consider these cases (and the court doesn't know whether he did or not), his failure to do so would not have constituted an error. All of these cases involved pole cameras that recorded yards or doors or parking lots connected to the defendants' residences , a place recognized since the beginning of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as one in which a resident has a reasonable expectation of privacy. The pole camera in this case did not record the defendant's comings and goings from his residence-it recorded his comings and goings from his drug stash house, in the public, common areas of an apartment building. The Seventh Circuit has said that even a resident doesn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of an apartment complex, so the court is hard-pressed to see how the defendant's expectation of privacy could be reasonable when he wasn't even a resident. These cases do not support the defendant's argument.
The defendant neglects to mention the many cases in which courts have rejected his reasoning-including a case decided by this court. In Kubasiak, this court considered pole camera surveillance with recorded using a fixed camera placed in a neighbor's house which recorded only the exterior of a residence. Kubasiak, Case No. 18-Cr-120, Dkt. No. 48 at 15-16. This court found that "[t]he surveillance did not present the kind of aggregate view of intimate details of the defendant's every movement that concerned the concurrence in Jones, or the majority in Carpenter." Id. The same analysis applies here. At most, the pole camera captured the defendant's comings and goings from an apartment in which he did not reside, in a building in which he did not reside, for a period of (according to the defendant's "information and belief") forty-nine days. Even assuming the defendant appeared on the pole camera surveillance footage every day, it would not have recorded who visited his home, when he was home and when he was away, what his daily schedule was, who he lived with.
*730Judge Jones did not err in recommending that this court deny the motion to suppress, and the court will adopt that recommendation.
III. CONCLUSION
The court OVERRULES the defendant's objections to Judge Jones's report and recommendation. Dkt. No. 223.
The court ADOPTS Judge Jones's recommendation. Dkt. No. 219.
The court DENIES the defendant's motion to suppress. Dkt. No. 195.
The deadline for the parties to file pretrial motions has passed, and this was the only motion pending. The court's staff will calendar a date for a scheduling conference, to discuss with this defendant and the others who have not resolved their cases whether the court needs to set dates for a final pretrial conference and a trial.
Neither party asked Judge Jones to conduct an evidentiary hearing. In his objection to the report and recommendation, the defendant asserted that, "[u]pon information and belief, the pole camera surveillance lasted at least 49 days." Dkt. No. 223 at 6. The defendant argues that Judge Jones "failed to account for the length of the pole camera surveillance ...." Id. In a footnote, the defendant says that "[i]f this Court desires additional facts, [the defendant] requests this Court remand the matter to Magistrate [Judge] Jones for an evidentiary hearing." Id. at n.1.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- United States v. Fontae KELLY
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- 1 case
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- Published